Harper’s Bazaar 150th Anniversary Empire State Building Projections

When Harper’s Bazaar wanted to make their sesquicentennial celebration at NYC’s Rainbow Room truly epic, they turned to Obscura to create art on the north façade of the Empire State Building. Our creative team worked with Harper’s to select the best images from their 150 year history and transform them from print to a 30-minute projection show of images and animations, honoring Harper’s world-famous photographers, fashion designers and models.

We installed 69 Christie Digital HD 20k J Series projectors in our custom-fabricated projector housings atop a nearby parking garage, projecting at an extreme 51º angle onto the north façade of the Empire State Building. The building had been laser scanned and 3D modeled to account for projection mapping on its architectural variances, and to ensure we were projecting with enough lumens that even at such an extreme angle it would still be bright and crisp when seen from a mile away at the Rainbow Room.

The fanfare for Harper’s 150th anniversary was worthy of its long, esteemed history. The celebrities came out in droves, with supermodel Kendall Jenner flipping the switch to launch the first of seven projection shows on the Empire State Building for the gathered guests to enjoy. All told, the event garnered nearly half a billion media impressions worldwide — with most reports gushing over Harper’s having transformed this iconic building into art for a New York minute.